Ethical Shopping News

Saying that you monitor your supply chain to ensure that labor and environmental standards are followed looks great on a CSR report, but it's how a company goes about this monitoring that really tells the story.

Whether it be ten block walks in the snow to the bus stop or the difficulty of transporting furniture or groceries home from the store, there have traditionally been very few cities where there is no practical advantage to having a car. But a new trend in transportation has many citizens rejecting automobile ownership in favor of car sharing services like Zipcar, and supplementing public transportation with bicycles.

Many things that end up on the curb each week aren't thrown out because they're broken or even obsolete — they're just not useful to their owner anymore and they take up too much space. Five years ago, a man by the name of Deron Beal set out to make us think twice about the value of the stuff we no longer use, through a network of community message boards called Freecycle.

The New York Times reports today that despite the relatively relaxed pace at which the price of organic food has risen in comparison to other produce and processed food in the past few months, organics are about to see dramatic price increases across the board. With the cost of organic feeds for meat and dairy, and the decreased incentive for farmers to go organic due to higher prices for non-organic foods, there's a good chance that the cost of many of your favorite organics will go up by as much as 20 percent in the very near future.

Congestion fees may be a new concept in the United States, but the idea dates back decades and has been implemented in dozens of traffic-heavy highways and urban areas throughout Europe and Asia. Such measures have usually been successful in reducing congestion and encouraging the use of public transportation, while helping to raise the funds necessary to build alternative transportation infrastructure.

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Buying stuff is necessary, but it's not always good for people or the planet. We've combed the marketplace to tell you who's good and who's not. Please join our community of consumers with a conscience.